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Who said anything about "violation?" Obviously, pederasty existed within a supportive social framework. A deep-dive into Greek antiquity serves an entirely legitimate, and fascinating, historical function but there are only limited aspects of that society that can meaningfully serve as models for our own or a conceivable future society, in large part because the individual is preordained by any number of arbitrary factors over which he has little or no control which determine his choices such as, as you allude to, being "free-born," or not. An awful lot has happened in the intervening two-and-a-half millennia, some good and some bad. That means that anything that we borrow from them must be judiciously selected and hybridized with post-Enlightenment and humanistic principles because otherwise, it really is just an antiquarian wank-a-thon for classicists who - have you ever noticed - never imagine themselves as having been born with the bad luck of being a slave? It's sort of like how those who believe in reincarnation always believe themselves to have been great historical figures rather than the maid who scrubbed the floors. That's why I can say that boylovers are part of the gay community. The gay community has the virtue of being historically very recent, so much so that there are still some of us who were a part of it and still alive. The lesson of Greek pederasty that is valuable to us is that it existed, that there can be a legitimate place for relations between men and boys, that both benefited from it as did the community, as a whole. The same can be said for man/boy love in recent gay history. The fact that we served as scapegoats as the price of social admission gays were willing to pay does not constitute an imperative that I abandon all claims to being gay. When you come up with a good argument that I should, I will eagerly hear it. So, that's my point: don't condescend to those of us who insist that we are members of the gay community, such as it is. You have no greater claim to engagement with the possible than do we and, I would argue, you have a good deal less. |